Judith C. Waller

She was one of the first female radio station managers in the United States, along with Eleanor Poehler of WLAG/WCCO in Minneapolis,[1] and Bertha Brainard of WJZ and Vaughn De Leath of WDT in New York City.

Waller also began a program at Northwestern University to provide professional training to college students interested in broadcasting as a profession.

[2][3] Following her 1908 graduation from Oak Park High School, a wealthy aunt gave her the gift of a year in Europe.

Waller settled into work at J. Walter Thompson in Chicago in a new division of the company called the "women's department", eventually spending two years in their New York offices.

[5] After her mother's health made her return to Chicago in 1920, Waller found employment at the local offices of the American Red Cross.

Strong phoned her one evening saying that the Daily News had just bought a radio station; he offered Waller the job of managing it.

[8] The radio station was WGU and it was jointly owned by the Daily News and a Chicago department store, The Fair.

Since the other Chicago radio station, KYW, was known for playing jazz, she realized she needed to do something different at WGU to attract an audience.

[17] Because early radio stations had very small budgets and no commercials to create revenue, having guests or performers meant asking them to work without pay.

Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll were on WGN radio with a popular local program called "Sam 'n' Henry.

"[27] Gosden and Correll did not renew their contract with WGN because the station was unwilling to grant them syndication rights for their program.

[28] The asking price for Gosden and Correll and their announcer, Bill Hay, was $25,000 per year, along with their right to syndicate their radio show.

Since WGN owned the title Sam 'n' Henry, the new radio program was called Amos 'n' Andy and it aired on WMAQ for the first time in March 1928.

When she tried to explain that Amos 'n' Andy was not musical but a story told in segments, she was asked if she thought such an act could be heard on the network every weekday.

The program was signed and made its debut on the Blue Network on August 19, 1929; NBC paid a record $100,000 for the first year of broadcast rights.

[36] From 1950 to 1951 the series was relaunched as an anthology with a Paul Revere narrator using historical events to discuss general concepts of law and democracy.

[38][39] When it was completed in 1929; WMAQ shifted its transmitter to a site west of Chicago's Loop in Elmhurst, Illinois, and moved to the Daily News Building.

[47] In 1930, the network leased more than 66,000 square feet of space in the newly completed Merchandise Mart with plans to move 50 radio programs which were presently originating in New York to their new Chicago headquarters.

[15] During the time the Daily News owned the station, Waller had risen to become the vice-president and manager of WMAQ with William S. Hedges as president of the company.

[53] Waller began a radio club for children centered around educational programs broadcast by WMAQ for use in the classroom.

[54] The University of Chicago and WMAQ radio had an extensive working relationship; both agreed to try something new in the way of public affairs programming.

[58] Two years after its inception, Waller successfully convinced the NBC network to air the discussion show as a sustaining program.

Since the university was dependent on commercial radio stations to air the programs it produced, it was necessary to accommodate the broadcasters by notification of a show's topic in advance and to provide them with notes giving a rough sketch of what was to be said on their airwaves.

[64] She represented the network by participating in various seminars on education, attending conventions and through her many speaking engagements; Waller spent about six months a year traveling the US.

[65][66][67] She established a professional training program for young people interested in entering the broadcast industry through a joint effort with Northwestern University beginning in 1942.

[72][73] Horwich only had experience with television as part of some panel and discussion programs, but was an experienced nursery school teacher.

[75][73] Neither was prepared for the 150 calls to the station praising the program immediately after it had ended or the flood of positive viewer mail which followed.

[75] Within two months, it was beating Arthur Godfrey's morning television show in ratings and was receiving 500 letters from both parents and children daily.

[81] Waller remained active in the Northwestern University Summer Institute she had helped to start in 1942 and assisted in expanding the program to other colleges.

[26][80] Waller, who had received many honors and honorary college degrees for her work in the field of communications, was known as "The First Lady of Radio" by many.